As someone who has loved music since before birth (that’s another story according to my Mom) and has been a guitarist for many moons, I’m a discriminating listener. An artist has to truly hit me in the right spot and Tret Fure is one of those artists. When she comes to town, it’s not a matter of “if” we can go to the show, it’s a matter of “who’s calling to get the tickets”.

I first discovered Tret’s music in the early 1990’s during my own personal process of coming out. At the time she was writing and performing with Cris Williamson and the music created a key part of our personal coming out soundtrack. By the time we discovered her music she had already been a prolific writer, performer, and music engineer for many years. As a fan and musician I have particularly enjoyed watching her music and on stage presence evolve during this time.

After a recent concert at Godfrey Daniels, Tret was gracious enough to do this interview. I hope you enjoy her heartfelt and thoughtful responses. Read the rest of this entry »

In September, Adventure Out Women launched its online presence aimed at providing a networking portal for the professional woman who surrounds herself with pride 365 days a year. Behind the scenes of this new portal are two women, Dawn Dudgeon and Belinda Ramirez who saw a need for a space where likeminded professional women can connect.

I have the distinct honor of being a contributor to their portal and I recently asked Belinda and Dawn to share a bit about the site and themselves.

What has been your biggest challenge being out in your business
life/career?

I can honestly say that looking back; I believe there were times when my patience was challenged. I have never been the kind of person to hide things or lie about who I am. What you see is what you get, the good, bad and the ugly. I have been out since I was very young. I never made excuses about who I am or tried to justify my actions. You are who you are, period. Life is not that complicated, people sometimes can make things much more difficult than they have to be. Not intentionally but we are all human and have good and bad days.

What is your long-term vision for Adventureoutwomen - what do you
most want to have happen as the impact of your work?

I believe that we have developed a very unique vehicle of communication for women to share information and provide professional services, but that is just a very small part of what AOW is. Anyone who knows Dawn and I would agree that being healthy inside and out is very important to us. We believe that your mind and body are a big part of who you are. Taking care of it and carefully feeding it can change how you are and what you feel.

To us learning is very important, we are always in some sort of class or seminar and thrive on learning new things and meeting new people. In developing this portal, Dawn and I brainstormed and wrote down all things we wanted AOW to stand for. We took a pad and pen and wrote down all the good things we liked about portals we used frequently. We were able to develop a business model that adopted some of Craig’s list and put a spin on it by writing about the things that interest us and our community and by offering other activities and events that would allow women to exercise their minds as well as their bodies.

Our dream and hope is to have Adventure out Women be the Craig’s list for the lesbian community. Craig’s list is a no frills, very functional web site. One can get information without all the banner ads, and annoying marketing ads to distract you.

With AOW you can network by marketing professional services, posting events and joining us on our outdoor group workout activities.

What is the #1 piece of advice you would give any woman wanting to
be successful in business?

Number 1 is being honest, bottom line. Do what you say, and say what you mean. Understand that success is the intersection of hard work and opportunity. Opportunities sometimes present themselves, be sure to be ready to take them and understand that it is up to you to find new avenues for opportunities. Never give up on your dream and when people give you constructive criticism, take it for what it is worth and use it to your benefit. Also understand that in our small and growing community there are many wonderful people out there who will help you. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and make sure you return the favor. In the end it is all about networking and making mutually beneficial relationships.

Networking and learning the ins and outs of being a professional
woman can be overwhelming. What’s a simple way for a woman to get
started connecting with other successful women?

This is right up our alley! Well first of all surround yourself with others who you aspire to be like. Dawn and I have some friends we admire who are respected in our community. They started a gay yellow pages in Sacramento called Valley Rainbow Page 9 years ago and are very successful, honest and hard working men. For us we do not limit our circle to professional lesbian women.

AOW is all about networking and sharing information of interest with the lesbian community. But we do work with some professional men who target our audience and have some very good advice and services to offer. We often ask them for their opinion.

What brings you the most joy personally or professionally?

I can honestly say that success brings me the most joy both personally and professionally. For me the meaning of success is not being famous or having a lot of money, neither of those applies to me. Success to me is being content with your life. I can say that I am very satisfied with who I am today. With the circle of friends I surround myself with, with the things I have and most importantly with my relationship with Dawn.

Be sure to check out Adventure Out Women as it grows as new content is added regularly. If you want to reach Dawn or Belinda you can email them at dawn@adventureoutwomen.com and belinda@adventureoutwomen.com respectively.

It’s no secret from my previous posts, I love the blog Queercents. I thought it would be great to interview two of the founders and contributors here, Nina Smith and Dawn.

Happy reading….and I encourage you to subscribe to the Queercents conversation.

What was your inspiration to start Queercents?
Nina: I had been blogging for about a year with Sitting Pretty and was looking for a way to reach out more specifically to the LGBT community. The traditional queer finance sites such as GFN.com and the money channel at PlanetOut and other sites were missing the more “personal” blogging format.

Dawn: I saw it as an opportunity to gives the glbt community something that was personally theirs. A comfort zone if you will.

How did you first get interested in finances?
Nina: I wanted a plan to get out of the rat race. I was always striving for a pay raise, a year-end bonus or wishing that my commission accelerator kicked in by the second quarter. But no matter how much money I made in my job, it never seemed to be “enough” money. I read the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and it changed my perspective on money. It taught me to buy assets with my disposable income. I put an end to the $3,000 vacations (liability), no more $600/month car-lease payment (liability), and I got a lot more conservative with the affordable luxuries (saying no to the $3 lattes… liability). Instead, I saved my money and started buying assets. Specifically, houses.

Dawn: Ever since I learned to count with money and realizing more more got me more things, it has been been a sword fight of medieval proportions to both have what you “need” and save money as well.

How did the collaboration between the 3 of you (Nina, Dawn, Caitlin) come about?
Nina: We found each other online. The personal finance blogosphere is actually a fairly small group. We were avid readers of each other’s blog and the gaydar kicked in. I finally just asked if they wanted to collaborate on a queer specific site and they both thought it was a good idea. Funny thing is, we have never met in person. That’s the power of the Internet.

Dawn: Nina put out the Gay signal in the sky that she had a few ideas and was looking for other people and I jumped at the chance to include that area of my life in a site. And I like reading Nina’s site, so I figured she was a decent person. I wasn’t disappointed.

What is your long-term vision for Queercents - what do you most want to have happen as the impact of your work?
Nina: I’m not sure how this effort will play out, but I’m hoping that Queercents will be the springboard to my next career. My desire is to be able to write full time on the topic of finances. Additionally, I believe that Queercents inspires people… especially those that need a little encouragement with their money skills. It makes me feel good that we’re helping people.

Dawn: I just want it to be around for a long time, providing tips, experience and a place for people to voice they opions on financial matters. Personally, I don’t have any ambitions beyond wanting the site to do well. I’m still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.

What is the #1 piece of advice you would give any woman wanting to be financially successful?
Nina: Learn to be self-sufficient and live within your means.
Dawn: Find an attitude of happiness beyond the money. So that no matter if you have a million or zero, you have confidence in yourself and place in life. To me that is a financial success.

Finances can be overwhelming. What’s a simple way for a woman to get started cleaning up debt, etc?
Nina: Stick to a budget; pay off your debt and make owning a home your #1 goal.

Dawn: First, sit down and figure out how much you owe and what your minimum payments are
Second, Find places to cut back on monthly expenses (cable, phone, subscriptions, habits)
Third, sell items that are cluttering your space to help pay down the debt
Fourth, Go to the library and check out books for inspiration or since you are reading this, continue searching online. There are no easy fixes, it took a while to pile up the debt and it will take a while to get rid of it.

You have a series on Money & Mates. Based on your experience, what are a few simple ways a couple can all participate in managing finances?
Nina: I wrote a post about this recently called Team Effort about how to get both people of a partnership interested and involved in the finances. According to the experts quoted in the post, they say, “It’s vital that both parties participate, even if one doesn’t feel qualified, entitled, or interested. People in a relationship may have very different long-term goals, and even if the goals are aligned, they may have very different ideas about how to get there. Failure to include both viewpoints can lead to big problems in a relationship as well as a bad financial plan.” Bottom line, couples need to talk about money matters.

Dawn: Communication, even if you have seperate accounts, talk about where all the money is going so their are no secrets
Always, Always discuss the big buys with your partner, If you don’t know if something should be discussed with them or not, then you propably should.

What brings you the most joy personally or professionally?
Nina: On a personally level, sharing my life with my partner, Jeanine brings inspiration and companionship to my day-to-day. I consider my life work to be writing and this brings me an immense amount of joy. My real work is selling software and this provides me with a good living. No complaints there. The combination offers a nice balance for me professionally.

Dawn: I find so much Joy and providing my experience to others and also getting others experiences so that I can learn as well.

Nina Smith is the co-founder of Queercents, a personal finance blog that offers a distinctly queer perspective on money for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community. Nina shares her views on how to achieve financial independence through saving and investing. Nina, a seasoned real estate investor, has been featured on Logo from MTV Networks and is a contributing personal finance writer for the Blade, a regional LGBT magazine. Nina resides in Newport Beach, CA and may be reached at nina@queercents.com.

Dawn is a Co-founder of Queercents a financial blog for the GLBT community, where Dawn shares her personal experiences with frugal living, debt and opinons on the world of money. Dawn’s day job is working in the telecommunications industry because she loves living in a cubicle. When she isn’t working she goes to movies with her partner and plays on the computer. Dawn resides in Englewood, CO and can be reached at Dawn@queercents.com

Queercents… we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going shopping without coupons.